Kingfisher Point Natural Area

Reclaiming an Industrial Waste Site

Kingfisher Point Natural Area (146.9 acres) lies east of downtown Fort Collins, and the Cache la Poudre River flows through the northern portion. The Poudre Trail winds its way along the south side of the river and through riparian cottonwood forest for 0.8 miles, and to the south of the trail, fields and ponds provide sanctuary for water fowl. Natural areas also lie beside the river to the west (Williams Springer) and east (Cattail Chorus and Riverbend Ponds) of Kingfisher Point. This area was not always devoted to recreation and preservation, though.1

Land and water use at Kingfisher Point have changed several times in the last 150 years. In the 1860s, the area became part of Alfred Howes’ ranch. The Chaffee Ditch, built in 1872, flowed along the western edge, irrigating farms to the southeast until the 1970s, so water bordered the area on the west and north. For the next fifty years, owners used the land for agricultural production until, in 1916, Fort Collins’ Great Western Sugar Company purchased just under 93 acres along the north and south sides of the river from Water Supply & Storage Company for waste disposal. In 1926, when settling ponds north of the river filled to near capacity, the company built a flume suspension bridge across the Poudre River to move lime-laden effluent used to make sugar to the southern site. Every day the factory ran, Great Western discharged thousands of gallons of slurry from the factory into settling ponds where solids separated from water. Flumes and laterals cut across the area, directing lime sludge into ponds and cleaner water over spillways and back into the Poudre River. Great Western used the south side ponds until the factory closed in 1955. Then the ponds were left to dry up, and weeds took over lime-laden soil as deep as 11 feet. After nearly thirty years as an industrial waste dump, the area returned to agricultural use. In 1973, the area supported wetland pasture and alfalfa production.

In 1998, the Fort Collins Natural Areas Program (NAP) purchased the dried waste ponds and has worked since then to rehabilitate the soil, remove non-native plants, and create places for urban recreation. Further south, NAP also added land that includes floodplains ponds, possibly the site of earlier gravel mining like those at Cattail Chorus and Riverbend Ponds, to Kingfisher Point to create a more hospitable area for water birds. After a century and a half, the city mostly has returned water at Kingfisher Point Natural Area to wildlife and environmental protection while simultaneously creating green spaces for residents to recreate.2

Settling ponds for lime sludge line the north and south sides of the Cache la Poudre River in the 1937 aerial photograph. The ponds, now part of Kingfisher Point and Cattail Chorus Natural Areas, appear as brighter white and gray shapes than many of the fields surrounding them. Courtesy of the Papers of Maurice L. Albertson, Water Resources Archive, Colorado State University

This aerial image, taken in 1977, shows fields planted on top of 6 to 11 feet of dried up lime waste at the site of the former settling ponds. Ponds and water-filled gravel pits are also visible to the south and east of the area. Courtesy Fort Collins Local History Archive, FC00222b

More ponds appear to the south of the former lime waste settling ponds in this 1993 USGS image. Fort Collins Natural Areas amassed tracts of land for Kingfisher Point and adjacent natural areas between 1979 and 2004. Photo from earthexplorer.usgs.gov

Kingfisher Point, Cattail Chorus, and Riverbend Ponds Natural Areas as they looked in 2013. Timberline Road now splits the natural areas and connects with Mulberry Street to the north. Photo from earthexplorer.usgs.gov